Stratospheric Skydiving: Opening the Door to Civilian Space Travel | Alan Eustace
- 6 years ago
The first time you think of something in a totally new way, says Alan Eustace, people will think you're crazy. Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/alan-eustace-on-jumping-out-of-stratosphere
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - Well, I was a skydiver before I was a computer scientists so I started skydiving when I turn 18 and I wrote my first computer program probably when I was 19, so the order is definitely sky diving then computer science. But I skydived for a very long time. I've obviously worked in the technology field for a long time. I had pretty much given up skydiving at one point when I moved out to California in 1984 and didn't make another skydiver for a very long time. Meanwhile I started flying airplanes and working in technology companies, working on management. And it wasn't until maybe six or seven years ago that I got the bug to skydive again and so for that I got requalified in skydiving and then it's a long story but I ended up deciding to try a stratospheric skydive as well.
The key inside that I think I had and that the team had was trying to build a capsule, a large capsule, maybe pressurized, maybe not, with lots of the infrastructure for going up was not the best way to accomplish what we were trying to accomplish. It was also not necessarily safest or the cheapest way to get into the stratosphere. And for us we wanted to take the analogy of scuba diving that if you're a scuba diver you take exactly what you need with you and nothing else underneath the water and we wanted to find a stratosphere equivalent. And so that's where we built, scuba diving for the stratosphere. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/0IRYDp.
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - Well, I was a skydiver before I was a computer scientists so I started skydiving when I turn 18 and I wrote my first computer program probably when I was 19, so the order is definitely sky diving then computer science. But I skydived for a very long time. I've obviously worked in the technology field for a long time. I had pretty much given up skydiving at one point when I moved out to California in 1984 and didn't make another skydiver for a very long time. Meanwhile I started flying airplanes and working in technology companies, working on management. And it wasn't until maybe six or seven years ago that I got the bug to skydive again and so for that I got requalified in skydiving and then it's a long story but I ended up deciding to try a stratospheric skydive as well.
The key inside that I think I had and that the team had was trying to build a capsule, a large capsule, maybe pressurized, maybe not, with lots of the infrastructure for going up was not the best way to accomplish what we were trying to accomplish. It was also not necessarily safest or the cheapest way to get into the stratosphere. And for us we wanted to take the analogy of scuba diving that if you're a scuba diver you take exactly what you need with you and nothing else underneath the water and we wanted to find a stratosphere equivalent. And so that's where we built, scuba diving for the stratosphere. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/0IRYDp.